


The Agency of Memory

by kesomon



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: 5 Things, Amnesia, Episode Related, Gen, Time Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-07
Updated: 2006-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-20 07:00:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8240299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kesomon/pseuds/kesomon
Summary: Jack Harkness has met the Doctor before. It's too bad he can't remember.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Facets](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/233401) by padawanpooh. 



> References to _The Talons of Weng-Chiang_ , _Battlefield_ , and a section of a story called _Facets_ on Teaspoon, which is an excellent read. Originally meant to be a 5-times sort of fic, but it petered out after three.
> 
> Originally posted to FFN 11/7/2006. Edited for spelling mistakes but otherwise posted in its original format.

Jack Harkness, eager, young, newly promoted Captain of the elite Time Agency, had heard of the Doctor.

The name was whispered in the line in the base cafeteria, after the infamous Magnus Greel was tracked down to late Victorian London. The renegade on the run had been fiddling with time, but when the agents on the case arrived at last at the scene, all that had been found was a ransacked room, a pile of dust among the cloak and mask of the man in question, and a note pinned to the malfunctioning, powerless Time Cabinet that Magnus had been using.

_Quit mucking up the timelines, you imbeciles.  
The Doctor_

The whole of the agency was whispering in conspiracy-style cliques, some worried, some joking, some completely dismissive about the stranger who had stopped Greel when they hadn't been able to touch him for years.

Jack belonged to the wistful but uninterested.

  


Jack Harkness, not so much older but far more experienced temporary Historical Team Leader 16, had met the Doctor.

His team, docked in what they hoped had been the historically accurate dress of Arthurian England, had been sent back to the time of King Arthur and his Knights to fill in the gaps of the history books. A trivial and somewhat pointless task, to Jack; the taboos of that culture were far too short-sighted to allow much of his brand of fun.

Jack was scouting out the area around their landing point, to make sure none had witnessed the timeship's arrival in the place he knew as Cadbury from the Vortex. There was a fellow, perched upon a rock in shabbily patched robes, looking quite thoughtfully across the water of Lake Voortigan. When the little man turned to look at him, Jack was taken aback at how deep his gray eyes seemed to be, as if seeing right through to his very soul, and Jack was instantly unnerved.

When he requested the funny little man to clear out of the area, the man didn't budge. Instead, he eyed Jack up and down scrutinizingly, and in a remarkably scottish accent, he told Jack that his 'period dress' was far from accurate, and that "their kind" (Jack could see the quotations in the words) should go back to where they came from. When Jack turned away to discreetly radio assistance, the little man vanished, as if by magic.

Later, his underlings returned from the castle itself with reports that made very little sense. Walking bears traipsing the countryside, an foreign old man and a woman in pink and a strange little man in shabby robes whom King Arthur referred to as Merlin, sorcerer, astrologer, and doctor to the court.

For some reason, Jack decided not to include the strange little man in his mission reports.

  


Jack Harkness, renegade agent and amnesiac, dancing with the girl called Rose over war-struck London, didn't remember the Doctor.

The whispers of the cafeteria, the little man in Arthur's court, wiped from his mind in the two years absent from his memories.

When he shook the dark stranger's hand, dismissing the man's bemusement at being called Mister Spock, he could only wonder at the niggling feeling in the back of his mind that he was missing something important.

Who's to know, and who's to say, if the Doctor remembered him?


End file.
